The Po Delta and the Comacchio Lagoons

Where the Po ends there is not one mouth but a fan of branches, and around it a flat world of brackish lagoons, channels and sand ridges. The Emilian part is the Comacchio lagoons, thirteen thousand hectares of shallow water where eels have been caught for centuries with the same system of traps.

The birds are the reason people come: pink flamingos in their thousands, herons, avocets, black-winged stilts. You watch them from the embankments or from hides, best at dawn or at dusk. Boats leave from Comacchio and from the lidos and go round the lagoons in a couple of hours.

Getting around

By bicycle: the embankment roads are flat, long and almost free of cars. The classic ride takes in Comacchio with its three bridges, the abbey of Pomposa which has stood there since the ninth century, and the fishing stations. There is no shade and no shelter from the wind: water and a hat.

The mosquitoes are real, there are many of them and they make themselves felt at dusk. Anyone sleeping in a tent around here puts the net up before the pegs.